Lord Mayor denies eviction plan racist

Adelaide's Lord Mayor has rejected claims a plan to clear campers from the city parklands discriminates against Aboriginal people.

The council's Culture and Community Services Committee has backed a planned bylaw to evict homeless people from the parklands if they have stayed there for more than a week.

The matter will now be referred to the next full council meeting for what is expected to be final approval.

The council is keen to force the South Australian Government to find other accommodation for those who are camping.

Its plan involves putting up 'no camping' signs in English and Pitjantjatjara.

The executive director of housing organisation Shelter SA, Dr Alice Clark, says the new policy is aimed at Aboriginal people who sometimes stay in the parklands.

"I'm really not sure what the intention is there about how they'll be enforced. So, you know, will police be going to physically remove these people and their belongings and if that's the case, where will they be taking them?" she said.

"You can only imagine it might be a hospital or hopefully not a prison."

One camper, Leslie McKenzie, agrees the move is discriminatory.

"They sound racist every time they come out and see me because they know I'm Aboriginal and they're trying to tell me to move and it's like 'this is my own land and I'm not moving for none of you'," he said.

Lord Mayor Stephen Yarwood says race has nothing to do with the council's current plan.

"I would reject the inference that this is targeted at the Aboriginal community. In fact, my understanding of the issues are that this is a broader community issue. That it is actually mostly white Anglo-Saxon," he said.

'Genuinely concerned'

Social Housing Minister Ian Hunter has criticised the plan, saying it will only shift campers into other council districts.

"In 2007, we had about 107 people camping in the parklands, now its in the 60s so that shows that our interventions are working," he said.

"But they take time and they take a lot of intensive effort. If we work together looking at the intensive needs of these people we can actually reduce homelessness and reduce camping.

"You won't reduce it by just moving people to another patch."

But Mr Yarwood says the campers will be encouraged to go to welfare and housing services.

"We really need to not necessarily turf them out but look at it in a way that actually puts a little bit of pressure on both the campers and service providers to acknowledge that the clock is ticking," he said.

"Certainly we've had a number of businesses and residents raise concerns but also as elected members, as government officials, we're genuinely concerned about these people.

"We certainly are compassionate about their welfare and the issues that they're facing.

"It's important that we start this conversation with, 'You can't stay here and there are a range of things that we can do to help you'. If we just start with, 'Right, you can stay here for a while', it's a mentality that says that we will ultimately tolerate camping in the parklands."

Councillor Anne Moran agreed with the Lord Mayor about the need to act.

She said camping in the parklands was dangerous for both campers and city residents.

"We seem to have allowed the parklands to become a Christmas Island assessment centre. The minister seems to not understand the complexity or the magnitude of this problem, or indeed the inhumanity of this problem," she said.

"We're not calling the police and dumping these people at the city limits and just leaving them out, we would never do that but we're really giving the Government a timeframe - rather than the homeless people, we're saying you've got a week, there are plenty of empty motels, plenty of safe places that these very vulnerable people can be housed."

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